


Of Brushes and Swords

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Crack, Cuddling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Grooming, M/M, Possessive Sex, Smut, haircutting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:38:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “I could no more force your hand than force Father to rearrange the stars,” Michael tells him, dusting down his clothes with seeming disregard. Gabriel takes a step forward, though, and Michael reacts instantly with a step back, crouching. “And you cannot make me sit idly by and allow this to happen. I will not, brother. Do not ask it of me.”</i>
</p><p>The most fearsome battles are waged in the eyrie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Brushes and Swords

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Omano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omano/gifts).



> For [omaano](http://omaano.tumblr.com/), our fluffy angel love. We hope you like it bb! It was so much fun to write for you!

Of all the bloody battles Gabriel has seen on earth, those he and his brother had begun and those they has ended, the fiercest of all rages in the eyrie.

"Michael," Gabriel’s groan is deep enough to hum through the floor. He regards their sister, Raphael raising a lazy eyebrow and settling her wings to the side so their sibling has to find a new hiding place once more. "Michael, you act like a child, come here to me."

“Gabriel,” Michael answers, straightening as if he hadn’t just been ducking behind his sister’s back. “No.”

“I mean it. Do not force my hand -”

“I could no more force your hand than force Father to rearrange the stars,” Michael tells him, dusting down his clothes with seeming disregard. Gabriel takes a step forward, though, and Michael reacts instantly with a step back, crouching. “And you cannot make me sit idly by and allow this to happen. I will not, brother. Do not ask it of me.”

"A flair for the dramatic you picked up, no doubt, from Uriel," Gabriel says with a sigh, tilting his head one way and then the other, stretching his neck. "But one way or another, sitting idle or held down, brother, this will happen."

A sound from Michael, a mirror of the preparation his brother had done, before he bolts again, wings spread but held behind him while, for now, he uses his feet and not his flight to carry him away. Gabriel levels another look at Raphael who feigns ignoring him as she turns a page in her book.

"He's yours, Gabriel. I will have nothing to do with this."

"Fat load of use you are," Gabriel mutters, stepping around her, gently tugging her golden hair as he goes, knowing she smiles when he picks up his pace to give chase.

Their space is whatever they make of it, and Michael finds stairs beneath his feet. His eyes narrow and long legs carry him up two at a time until he flaps, one powerful burst, and takes flight. His twin’s wings snap the air behind him and Michael curses beneath his breath, higher and higher until suddenly he turns and dives.

Directly into his brother’s grasp.

“As if I didn’t know you were going to try that,” Gabriel tells him, laughing loud as Michael flaps against him. “You cannot fight me on this, brother, you’ll lose.”

“Who are you to force me? I do not answer to you, I will not -”

“Michael,” Gabriel tells him, ducking Michael’s elbow as he swings it back and lowering them with soft sweeps his wings back to the floor beneath. “I’ll use the voice.”

“No.”

"I will."

"You have no right."

"It is my gift," Gabriel reminds him, directing them to the ground and holding to his brother’s shoulder, "and mine to use."

"Gabriel -"

" _Michael, stay down._ " The voice comes as it always does, so deep it is less a sound and more a hum, a vibration in the air and in their bones. With a groan, Michael can do little more than obey, knelt on one knee as his brother steps around him and kneels to look at him properly.

"You are such a stubborn thing," Gabriel sighs, drawing a hand through Michael’s hair, tugging it lightly. "All for a haircut."

“I don’t want it,” Michael protests, entirely aware of how petulant he sounds, moreso when he pokes out his bottom lip. “It’s fine.”

“My fingers are stuck in it.”

“You shouldn’t have touched.”

Gabriel’s sigh is turned upward, seeking patience. “Fearsome Michael, how can you hope to inspire dread and awe among anyone when your hair’s so snarled it’s standing upright?”

“With my sword,” smirks Michael. He tilts his head back to regard his twin, upside down.

Tugging a little harder at his hair, Gabriel says simply, “My solution as well.”

“A brush, at least,” Michael says, squirming to try to escape but tugged back onto his bottom by Gabriel’s hand in his hair. “To straighten it - a compromise!”

"So it may tangle again?" Gabriel asks him, humming displeasure, shaking his head as he draws one of his swords and settles it in his hand. "You act as though I will behead you. Hair grows, brother, you will regain this mess again."

"Then why cut it at all?"

Gabriel sighs, long-suffering, and gently tugs Michael’s long hair straighter to hold it ready for grooming.

"And if I am as Samson?" Michael complains, eyes wide and pleading at his brother. "What if you cut my power away from me? What will Father's sword be, then, when all he is is an empty shell with short hair."

Further in the eyrie, Raphael responds with a delighted snort. Gabriel can only send his thanks that Uriel is enjoying earth again, and not here to take Michael’s side.

"I am willing to take my chances," Gabriel replies dryly, setting his sword against the tangled and messy strands of his brother’s locks and slicing clean through. Michael makes a soft sound, but genuine enough in his distress that Gabriel feels it tighten in his own throat. “Silly thing, it’s already near finished. Is it such an agony? Don’t say -”

“Yes,” Michael frowns, folding his legs and his arms. “You’ll regret this.”

“Will I.”

“I’ll make certain of it.”

“Oh?” Gabriel asks, with another cut through, dropping fistfuls of matted black hair to the ground. Michael’s feelings resonate in him, they always do, but Gabriel carries on despite. He’s always known what’s best for his brother. Whatever is best for Michael is best for him as well.

“I’m going to wear it,” Michael says. “All the time. The one with the ears, even if we’re smiting cities or destroying temples or anything. I’ll be a lion still, even without my mane.”

Gabriel nearly cuts against skin, holding back a laugh. He continues to shear his displeased sibling until his hair is somewhat more manageable. Only then does Gabriel kneel behind him, hands against Michael’s shoulders, soothing him from tension and tantrum. 

"And a fearsome thing you will be," Gabriel assures him. "As well as handsome. Can't have you scaring off humanity with your mess of a nest on your head." A kiss against his temple, and Gabriel pulls from his belt a brush, next, and sets it to the remainder of the mess of Michael’s hair. "You can move, now, Michael, as you wish."

“I can’t,” he huffs.

“You can - oh, Father help me. _Michael, move freely_ ,” Gabriel says, his lips hardly moving to form the words that sing to Michael’s being and every molecule that exists within it. The only voice in all of existence to which Michael listens besides their Father; the only one to which he must adhere.

He shoves forward onto his knees and stumbles again to sit heavy, facing Gabriel with a baleful glower. “That wasn’t fair.”

“Let me brush it.”

“Admit that wasn’t fair,” Michael insists, brows knit. “And then I’ll allow it.”

Gabriel watches him, his brother indignant, with dark pink against his cheeks and eyes wide. He settles more comfortably and considers Michael before him. He thinks it is hardly unfair, but he knows Michael when he gets like this.

"I know that there is fairness in reciprocity," he says, setting the end of the brush against his lips, tapping it there. "And that I need grooming as much as you. Will that please you, wild thing? You can do the same to me."

Michael’s frown tugs a little lower. He pushes off his hands and sits forward, legs curled beneath him, regarding his twin and the mess of hair around him. Regarding the brush in his hand, instead of a blade.

“I like your hair,” Michael says. “Just as it is.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrow in delight but he says nothing. Instead, just as when he preens his brother’s wings, he sits back for Michael to curl up in his lap. Then he sets the brush to Michael’s hair and begins to comb it. Against him, Michael settles, relaxes, arches into the combing as he does into the preening.

Gabriel bends to kiss his hair again.

"My fierce lion," Gabriel murmurs. "Brave in the most terrifying battles against the cruelest foes."

“This crueler than most,” Michael agrees. His eyes close beneath the kisses and soft words, beneath the steady stroke of Gabriel’s brush through his cropped hair.

“Why is that?”

“Because you are the last foe that I expected,” he says, lying back against Gabriel’s chest and wriggling closer when Gabriel’s arms fall across his shoulders. He crosses them at the wrist, brush still in hand, and rubs his cheek against his little brother’s own. “I will not cut yours. I’m too fond of tugging it to bend you closer to me,” he adds, smile flourishing brief and bright. “What else, then, in trade?”

Gabriel considers, the mess around them from Michael’s once-long hair. With a blink, it vanishes and leaves them in the room they prefer to read, masses of pillows and soft light filtering through invisible windows.

"What would you have of me, brother?" He asks, turning to look at Michael properly, bringing up his free hand to stroke a stray curl from Michael’s face. "If not my hair, would you have my voice?"

“You can’t give me that,” Michael grins, shivering when Gabriel’s fingers sink against his scalp and curl, fingernails softly scraping. “No more than I could give you my sword.”

“The swords that I gave you.”

“You know what I mean.”

Gabriel tilts his head to nuzzle into newly-softened hair, touching kiss after kiss until he finally says, “I could share it with you, to both our benefit. You like that.”

With another twist of pleasure, Michael wraps his arm up around Gabriel’s neck. He pulls himself more upright and turns to graze a kiss against his twin’s throat. Celestial body or one meant for the mortal world, it hardly matters - they all respond the same. Heart speeding, tripping over itself to maintain the racing of his pulse, the downward flow of blood that gathers heat in his belly and lower still…

“Raphael is still here,” Michael reminds him, nose wrinkling as he grins.

From the other room, there comes a sigh, a hum, a warm flicker of wings and Gabriel tilts his head at Michael.

"She is our tact when we have none," he comments, stroking Michael’s face again as their sister departs the eyrie for quieter fields to read in, or perhaps to seek her own wayward wandering twin. "And now you have me all for your own," he tells his brother. "What will you do with such a willing captive?"

Michael aches a little sound, sweet and high, and drags a lingering kiss against Gabriel’s jaw. Another lasts upon his cheek. Another snares the corner of his mouth. His twin pulls him near and Michael yields to him. No matter how he fights, he always will.

He holds his bottom lip between his teeth and releases it slowly, grinning. “Use your voice,” Michael murmurs. “If you insist on being my older brother -”

“I am.”

“By moments, only, hardly an instant.”

“But I am,” Gabriel laughs, his eyes searching across his twin’s features.

“If you insist,” Michael says again, “on enforcing your role as my older brother -”

“Better.”

Michael turns and drags his long legs up one at a time to straddle Gabriel’s lap, hands on his cheeks. “Then guide me,” he finishes, closing his request with a kiss that seals their breath together with a moan.

Gabriel sighs, contented and warm against Michael who seeks for him so sweetly. They had been close to this, before Gabriel had suggested - gently - his necessary haircut. He sets his hands against the base of Michael’s neck and gently guides him back.

" _Lay me down_ ," he murmurs. " _Tell me what you wish, and I will tell you how._ " It is often that they play with their gifts together, Gabriel commanding softly to see the effect it has on his brother, to let Michael play at resisting. Michael’s swords...

They find explicit pleasure together with those.

Michael’s hands span wide over Gabriel’s shoulders, both out of his control entirely and his choice to heed. In truth, he has never fully - even with all his fiery spirit - tried to resist his brother’s voice. There has never been reason for him to do so, not when the commands are so vital to their righteous undertakings, not when his brother seeks only to guide and protect him. He may attempt defiance, for the pleasure of it, but he yields as much by choice as by force.

He cannot imagine any world in which he would not trust his twin above all others.

He cannot imagine any world in which he would not cleave to his Gabriel.

But for now, he bends him back to the floor, palms pressing down soft silken robes and spreading beneath to stroke over skin smooth as marble and warm as sunshine. “I wish for you to make me feel handsome again,” Michael murmurs against his brother’s mouth. When he smiles, his nose wrinkles a little, and his eyes narrow. He tilts against Gabriel’s hand when it seeks through short-shorn locks. “I wish for you to show me how sincerely you feel it to be true.”

“ _Tell me_ ,” Gabriel says, with a whisper like a thunderclap, snapping lighting down Michael’s spine until he shivers.

And Michael whispers, helpless to him, “Take me.”

Gabriel hums, the voice still within him, still guiding every word and every sigh to a command in itself. In truth, his brother is hardly bereft with his hair so shorn. The brush has settled it to its usual calm waves and gentle flick. But he will do everything to have his brother feel adored and worshipped once more.

He arches up to kiss his brother, hands snared soft in his hair, eyes closed and breath cool against his cheek. Then with a flare of dark wings, he flips them to press Michael to the ground, settling his knees against Michael’s to spread them wide already.

" _Beautiful thing_ ," he whispers. " _Beautiful Michael, do you know what I will do to you, now that you're my own to have and keep, hmm_?"

Michael stretches, squirming, as if to escape when he wants anything but that. Gabriel catches his hands when they lift, pressing his wrists to the ground. He lays heavy atop his twin when Michael writhes against him. A laugh is trapped within a smear of lips tangled tight and Michael makes a little sound against him, cousin to the dismayed sounds when his hair was cut, but not at all the same.

“Love me,” Michael suggests, brows uplifted.

“ _Always_.”

“Keep me,” he insists.

“ _Always_ ,” Gabriel promises.

“Let me feel you,” Michael finally whispers, arching upward to whisper against his brother’s ear. “So deeply inside that it lasts for days and distracts me from what you’ve done to my hair.”

"You are adorably vain," Gabriel tells him, his own voice back in gentle teasing as he nuzzles his brother, as he keeps him pinned with one hand and uses the other to work open Michael’s loose dark pants. "It is as though you don't know how beautiful you are to me."

Another kiss, slippery and messy, a laugh between them both, warm air on the exhale.

" _Spread_ ," he growls, turning his head against Michael’s to tilt it away, biting the earlobe presented vulnerable to him. " _Wide._ "

Michael arches from the ground, held in place by shoulders and heels against the floor and his brother’s weight above him. A moan trembles past his parting lips and he tries to trap the next behind a bitten bottom lip but the words pull at him. They insist to him. His brother’s voice echoes coaxing down to his bones and Michael wants to give, he wants to spread and bend.

He tells himself he is not forced, but he knows he is.

He tells himself he is forced, then, but he knows he wants it, too.

No sooner are his trousers slipped free than his knees splay to the floor. Toes curling bare, wings unfurling pair by pair by pair, Michael lets his voice ring sweet as any prayer when his twin presses slick fingers between his legs to seek out that sacred space that makes them whole again. It cannot be Gabriel’s insistence alone that creates this between them, his voice that sunders heaven and earth alike. They are one and the same, their wants and needs and desires shared.

When Michael’s heart beats faster, he knows that Gabriel’s does, in turn.

"Hear me," Gabriel murmurs, watching his brother from beneath his own heavy fringe. "Hear me when I say I love you."

He doesn’t need the voice here, not for this. This is something that between them will never change, and is without contestation. He bends Michael a little further, keeps his eyes on his brother’s as he presses in, slow and deliberate, as deep and aching as Michael wishes.

"Frightening and terrible force you are," Gabriel grins. "Yet here, gentle as a kitten."

“No,” Michael protests, grinning, gasping, spreading wide as he can as Gabriel thrusts into him again. “Not a kitten.”

“No.”

“A lion.”

“My lion.”

Gabriel nuzzles against Michael’s temple and against his cheek. When Michael seeks with parted lips for a kiss, Gabriel indulges both their neediness with a sweep of mouths together and a tangle of tongues. They part and spread and close and press, seeking in every way to join the other in every imaginable manner. Michael’s fingers curl against the hand that holds them joined, his toes too, against the floor, when Gabriel rocks his hips back and buries himself in his brother again.

It is as harsh a taking as it is gentle, loving and intimate and close. They press together and pant when they cannot kiss, once in a while Gabriel hums words that ripple in command through Michael. To watch him try to resist being told to clench, hold his breath, lie flat and take it.

"Exquisite thing," Gabriel whispers to him. "Extraordinary."

Michael absorbs the praise as if it were sounded from trumpets on high, as if it were the prayers of thousands, as if it rang through a temple echoing off marble. His wings, all six, splay and stretch, each feather trembling in its moorings as his body tenses with each rough jut of hips against him, with each firm push inside. His hair does not matter. Nothing of their malleable appearance does. They are more than bodies, more than physical form. They are shared substance, eternal and undying, crafted by the hand of their Father into one perfect being severed in twain.

And so they defy him, in this way, with carnal delight and celestial fusion. Michael’s legs squeeze against Gabriel’s hips, his arms wrap long and strong around his neck. Each wing whispers as it closes around his brother who loves him most in all creation.

“You have made me that way,” Michael whispers, before a laugh quakes low and he draws a breath through clenched teeth. Release spills bright as sunlight, hot as stars, glittering between them. The only elevation greater than their very natures provide dizzies Michael to a moan as he trembles against his twin, his Gabriel, his beloved brother who turns his head to taste Michael’s pleasure from warm, parted lips.

Gabriel’s own release comes quieter, gentler than his brother’s had been, but relished and felt just as strongly. They are a feedback loop to each other, pleasure upon pleasure, warmth and softness and peace found only together.

"You will have to clean yourself when we wake," Gabriel murmurs against him, drawing the tip of his nose tickling up Michael’s throat before his lips taste his pulse. "You will wake with stunningly messy hair, it will call for a pleasant dip in the bath."

"Won't you preen me?" Michael smiles at him, his brother huffing a laughing breath against him.

"Selfish creature. What if, perhaps, I want to be preened for a change?"

“A wise being once told me,” Michael muses, “that there is fairness in reciprocity.” He smiles lazy as he is nuzzled and kissed, adored and cherished, as his wings splay to the floor around them and his hair is stroked by his brother’s familiar touch. “You preen me,” Michael says with a grin, “and I’ll preen you.”


End file.
